Key events
As promised, here is William Preston’s email:
Looks proper wet, doesn’t it?
It’s only stage two but I fear the fever dream I had shall not come to pass: Visma using Vingegaard as a stalking horse against Pogacar as Yates sits quietly a minute or so behind in the GC ranking before getting a stomp on up the mountains to win it all. After his thrilling heroics in Italy, he deserves a second grand tour win.
However, this year looks set to be an absolute corker, with Visma redefining super domestique riders to topple Pogacar’s crown.
My apologies to John Westwell, who was the author that email. I do have an email from William Preston that I will be sharing shortly.
John Westwell has emailed in with a couple of points on today’s stage:
Firstly, I wasn’t surprised to see Simon Yates lose time yesterday. Well, maybe seeing him lose time on the first stage, but not in general. After the massive high of winning the Giro – especially the way he did it by laying to rest the ghosts of the Colle delle Finestre from 2018 – he was always going to struggle to be competitive for the Tour. Physiologically, he isn’t the sort of rider who can be competitive in two stage races barely a month apart. With the exception of Pogacar, no rider is these days, but a climber who only weighs 58kg is always going to struggle to come back to form so quickly. I won’t be surprised if Simon isn’t particularly visible in the high mountains in the later parts of the stage. I think it will be largely up to Kuss and Jorgenson to accompany Vingegaard when the action hots up.
Secondly, Ned Boulting flagged up that he was going to read a passage from Les Miserables a few weeks ago on his podcast. He had identified the route on this stage as linking the two towns which he mentioned as being on today’s stage.
There’s a ‘demob happy’ atmosphere about the ITV crew this year, not least now that Boulting and Millar – accompanied by Lizzie Deignan – will be on the Tour next year reporting from the roadside independently of ITV. I’d expect a few more odd interludes in the next three weeks.
Ned Boulting is a fantastic broadcaster, I hope he can find a way back on to our screens when the Tour goes behind a paywall on TNT next year. I had a lovely chat with him before a tour several years ago for a preview piece that never got published, a thoroughly charming man. Here’s a question for the readers, what are your favourite cycling podcasts during the Tour? There’s a fair few to choose from these days.
154km to go. Tim Wellens has a issue with his bike and the camera captures him having a comfort break before eventually figuring out what’s going on and pans over to the mechanic who’s working on the bike.
158km to go. There is an absolutely huge bull being tugged around a field on the back of a tractor by a smiley farmer. Great stuff. The breakaway group has reformed and is now 2mins 33secs ahead of the peloton.
I should point out that we have a bumper afternoon of sport on Big Website today. Rob Smyth has over-by-over coverage of the fifth day of the second Test between England and India:
If tennis is more your thing, Daniel Harris is across everything at Wimbledon. Follow that here:
164km to go. We have a crash in the breakaway! Fedorov and Andreas Leknessund hit the deck on a slippery bend. It looks like both riders just lost their back wheels underneath them. Fortunately they are both back up and look fine. They’ve lost about 20 seconds but are working together to get back up to Armirail and Van Moer.
172km to go. You know it’s early on a long stage because now Ned Boulting is reading passages from Les Miserables. The breakaway is now 2mins 42secs ahead of the main bunch.
Nick Wayne has emailed in:
Simon Yates, What happened? Six minutes in arrears means relegation to super domestique. Was that the plan? No competition to Pog I suppose.
After his dramatic win at the Giro, I think Simon Yates was always going to be delegated the task of support rider to Jonas Vingegaard at the Tour. With that kind of time gap he’ll also now have more of a chance of going for the odd stage win when the race reaches the mountains.
182km to go. The weather is grey but the vibes are high on the roadside, there’s a brass band playing as the peloton passes through another commune.
190km to go. The peloton is cruising along at around 50km/h, not top speed but a fair lick. On ITV the action is so hot that the broadcast is just playing the Carpenters’ ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ over the top of the live pictures, quite why isn’t clear. On the road, Movistar’s Nelson Oliveira has come off the back for a backwheel tyre change and is now trying to work his way back into the peloton.
199km to go. The four-man breakaway has settled in and pulled out a lead which is now more than two minutes. Yevgeni Fedorov (XDS-Astana), Bruno Armirail (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Brent Van Moer (Lotto) and Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility) are the brave men who will try to take this lead to finish.
206km to go. We have racing, in what looks like truly awful conditions. There are four brave souls who are making an early bid to form the break. Once I’ve figured out who they are I will let you know.
The ceremonial rollout is winding its way out of Lauwin-Planque and we are aproaching the flag drop in about 1km. Some of the riders were a bit late arriving at the start line due to traffic on the narrow streets of the commune that is home to just 1,600 people so we’re a bit behind schedule. A lot of the riders are in their rain gear, which provides a bit more protection for them but makes my job a little harder as they’re all in black jackets tough over their typical jerseys. Kilometre zero incoming.
Preamble
Settle in folks, this is going to be a long one. The total length of the stage is a mammoth 209.1km, with a few categorised climbs that will probably weed out the pure sprinters but nothing too punishing. The good news is the finale will be worth the wait. The read on the stage profile is that the stage will explode in the final 35km, where there are a couple steep lumps and a bit of an incline towards a finish line, which runs along the banks of the river Liane in the streets of Boulogne. This will be one for the puncheurs and an early opportunity for the likes of Mathieu van der Poel or Wout van Aert to bag a stage and the yellow jersey. Just to cover my own back, I should point out that Tadej Pogacar is as capable of winning this stage as any other but will he want to show his hand this early? Frankly, trying to predict what the Slovenian will do is a fool’s game, so I will refrain from doing that.
What is easier to predict is that the weather will definitely be a factor. In typical northern French fashion, rain and crosswinds are going to batter a peloton that will be full of riders wary of being on the wrong side of any split. Tension can lead to mistakes and hopefully we won’t see a repeat of the crashes that marred stage one.
Grab your snacks, get yourself a drink and follow along. I will have you covered through to the end of the stage. If you have any thoughts you’d like to share, do send them in via the link at the top of the page.